


Dillon, Texas

by crickets



Category: Friday Night Lights
Genre: Gen, Yuletide 2008
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-25
Updated: 2008-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-02 04:01:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crickets/pseuds/crickets
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fifteen years after the State Championship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dillon, Texas

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Kass for Yuletide 2008. [Yuletide post.](http://yuletidetreasure.org/archive/72/dillontexas.html)

_Dillon, Texas._

Fifteen years ago, this town was bigger than life, bigger than it had ever been. Parades on main street, state championship, free pie down at the diner, everyone younger and better and quicker than they'd ever been or would ever be. Happier, too, in most cases. All bathed in a sea of blue and gold.

Back then, there was no voice in town louder than Buddy Garrity's, God rest his soul, booster club mouthpiece, proud and well-meaning, priorities all askew. No one drunker than Tim Riggins, no one more quietly proud than Jason Street, no one more pure than Matt Saracen, no face prettier than Lyla Garrity's, no one as good and kind as Landry Clark, no one as unafraid to tell you the cold hard truth than Tyra Collette, no smile bigger than Smash Williams', and no one stronger or wiser than Coach Taylor and the woman behind him.

And there was nothing more sacred than a Friday night down at the football field.

_Those days are over._

Now the streets of Dillon are quieter, a little greyer, a little more still. Not like back then, in the heyday. And that's what it was, a heyday. Things rise and fall. Sometimes people just take it for granted that they'll rise up again. They built houses out by the interstate, shopping malls, and soon a newer, bigger high school was put in, new lines on the map, and Dillon ended up with the short end of the stick more often than not.

_People just got used to losing._

Everybody left. _Nearly_ everybody, anyway. One by one, new faces replaced the old, new families moved in where our friends and neighbors used to live. And just like that, the town of Dillon got re-made.

-

It's autumn now, the start of a new school year, and despite our smaller numbers, it always feels like a new beginning here in Dillon. Because as dark as things have gotten, we still have hope and happiness, our hearts teeming with pregnant possibility just around the bend.

Things get better now and then, if you try hard enough, hope hard enough, clear eyes, full hearts, all that.

-

_Old faces return._

Tim Riggins loads his truck for a delivery out behind Riggins Brothers Feed and Supply Store. His brother Billy started it up a few years ago. (Billy and Mindy and the kids, BJ and Molly, the unlikeliest of unlikely success stories of Dillon, Texas if there ever was one.) Tim found his way back to town about a year later, with a broken heart and the knowledge that Billy was a better brother than he ever gave him credit for, and a better father too.

He sits in his truck for a minute, taps a finger on the steering wheel, remembers Lyla's voice on the phone the night before.

"_I'm coming_", she says. "_Tomorrow._"

"_You're coming_", he repeats. Not a question. Not an acknowledgment. He just doesn't know what else to say.

"_I love you_", she says this time, quietly, and he can hear the sirens of Dallas in the background.

Now, he pulls his wedding ring out of his pocket, slides it onto his finger. It only takes a few twists to get it into place.

_Maybe it's time._

He starts the truck.

-

Tyra tries.

She really does.

But she can never make herself stay very far away from her mother and her sister. She just misses them too much, and St. Louis is just too far away.

Trips back home become a regular occurrence and a financial burden. Eventually it's clear that moving back to Dillon is inevitable. Landry understands. He was always so good that way, always knew her better than anybody. So he lets her go. But he can't go with her. Can't make himself give up his dreams for the one dream he knows he'll never have. Not fully. Not completely. He has a job, a career, a life. And Tyra, in true form, has never agreed to marry him. (Maybe she's been looking for something better all this time.)

"_Landry, you're the only one,_" she says the morning before she leaves, eyes red, puffy.

"_Then marry me, Tyra,_" he asks her, one last time. "_Marry me and stay._"

She doesn't.

(But the phone rings every night. He never picks up.)

When he pulls into her driveway in the afternoon, it's been two-hundred and forty-seven days since he last saw her face.

He reaches for the door handle and wonders if he'll be able to make it to the front porch without breaking into a run.

-

He sits in the empty parking lot of the now-closed Alamo Freeze on the hood of a 1966 red and white Shelby GT 350. His fingers twist the white cap in his hand, and he resists the urge to put it on.

The sound of footsteps over loose gravel.

He looks up.

"Well if it isn't the _famous_ Smash Williams." Matt smiles. He looks older, his baby face finally matured, his voice more sure, the wedding ring on his finger reflecting the midday sun.

"How'd you know where to find me, QB?" Smash asks.

"Stopped by your house on the way into town," Matt says. "That's a hell of a place you built. The big league's treating you good, I take it. Your momma must be happy."

"She is. They are." He smiles and hops off the car, fishes in his pocket for a set of keys, holds them up. "Wanna go inside?"

They talk. About old times, about their lives, all the years that have passed. About Matt's college career, his coaching job, Julie and the kids. About Smash and his many failed marriages, how maybe this last one will stick, about his star turn in the NFL. Finally, they talk about Coach.

"You know if it hadn't been for him..." Smash's voice starts to waver. His eyes scan the fading menu above the counter, the cash register, the dust-covered tiles, his escaped life sentence.

"I know," Matt says. "Me too."

-

Jason is the last to arrive in town.

Tim picks him up, calls him _Six_, like always, tells him Lyla's waiting in the truck, helps him with his bags.

Jason's got that same smile, and he doesn't say anything about Lyla. He's got three whole days to get caught up, and though more miles separate them than ever, he still considers Tim his best friend and vice versa.

Tim asks about the kids, and Jason gets that proud beam on his face, and Tim remembers instantly why everybody loved Jason Street so much. He was then, and is now, a man deserving of every bit of admiration that he ever got.

Lyla kisses him on the cheek at the truck, places a hand on his knee and smiles through watery eyes.

"I've missed you," she says. "We both have."

-

Gracie Belle Taylor is going into high school.

_High school._

And no one can quite believe it, least of all her mother.

Tami Taylor stands in front of the mirror, puts on a pair of earrings, smoothes her hands down the front of her black dress.

"Mom, do I look okay?" Gracie's in the bedroom doorway, looking more grown up than Tami ever imagined.

"You look beautiful, sweetie," she says, and smiles a sad smile, and at that moment she doesn't know if she'll ever able to smile any other way again.

-

She remembers something she once told him.

_You are a teacher first. And I know you're going to say it's corny, but you are a molder of men. And I find that admirable._

Looking out over the crowd in the packed church at the funeral service, she's never been more struck by just how true that is.

-

Smash Williams stands at the podium, the first to speak.

"Coach Eric Taylor saved my life," he says, his head bowed, tears beginning to well. "There's just no other way to say it."

He is the first of hundreds to tell the same tale that day, some other variation, proof of the impact Eric Taylor had on the town of Dillon, on the world.

_Coach Taylor saved their lives._

-

Julie sits with Matt, her hand squeezing his tight, their daughter sleeping in her lap.

"Good-bye daddy," she whispers only loud enough so she can hear.

-

When they lower the casket into the ground, amid quiet whispers and gentle sobs, a voice is heard. (Landry's, Tim's, Jason's? No one quite remembers.) And two words ring out like a beacon.

"Clear eyes!"

The crowd follows.

"Full hearts!"

"Can't lose!"

_Clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose._

Over and over they chant, until the town of Dillon rises up, and up, the way it used to be, pasts and futures, memories and dreams all mingling at once, in mourning and rejoicing.

-

Later, at the Applebee's, they gather, they laugh.

They laugh like old times.

They reminisce, and they make plans, and they fall in love with this town all over again. This town that made them who they are. This town that for them will forever be that town of fifteen years ago, all youth and shining happy faces. Bad times, good times. Tears of pain and goodness too.

This town of Dillon, Texas.


End file.
